drives

While the last time most of us thought of shingles was when we were itchy in eighth grade, Seagate has been thinking of them as a way to store data. Called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) Drives, Seagate’s new drives can store 8 terabytes of data for about 3 cents a gigabyte. Read More

Another day, another salvo in the long-running NY Times/Tesla Motors war. This time the NYT journalist John Broder, writing on the New York Times blog Wheels, has refuted nearly all of Elon Musk’s points regarding fabrication at worst and lying at best. Read More

Seagate has just announced that they’ve sold their 1 millionth Momentus XT hybrid solid-state/mechanical hard drive, an interesting development for the hard drive manufacturer especially considering the rise of expensive SSD drives. These hybrid drives run at 7,200 RPM, nearly twice as fast as standard mechanical drives. The drives contain some solid-state memory as well as a full… Read More

It’s nice to have a few hundred gigabytes in your bag and when the first guys to the wireless hard drive party, Seagate, released the Satellite, they piqued my interest by allowing those gigabytes to be streamed onto iOS devices as well as almost any laptop or cellphone. Now, however, Hitachi seems to have hit the sweet spot with their wireless drive with built-in access point and… Read More

I’m trying to put this thing into a position where I can really test it out but basically it’s a wireless hard drive. It’s called the Seagate GoFlex Satellite and it contains a small battery, a 802.11g/n radio, and a 500GB hard drive. To use it, you connect it to a data source – your computer, NAS, etc. – and drag over files you might want to use or share with others. Read More

Need 3 terabytes of storage? Sure, why not? The HDCA-UT30K from IODATA is one of the first commercial 3TB drives available and it can act as a DVR for Toshiba Regza TVs and, presumably, hold thousands and thousands of LOLCat photos. Read More

You can’t really tell how slim the Seagate GoFlex Slim drive really is until you see it next to a standard external hard drive. This wee drive is .354 inches thick and about four inches long – about the size of a larger cellphone – and it includes a removable port adapter for USB 2.0/3.0 compatibility and an internal 320GB hard drive running at 7200RPM. Read More

Fast hard drives are a dime-a-dozen these days, but this hard drive is the fastest. Why? Because ASUS gave it the Lamborghini logo and added USB 3.0 and 7500 RPM drives, silly! The Lambo-drives come in 500 and 750GB versions and should cost a little over $140 and $190, respectively, once pricing is announced. Until then, just feast your eyes on the clean lines and sassy bolting bull badge… Read More

It’s an endless battle: a new transport protocol replaces an old one and all of the drives based on the older system are completely obsolete. Well, Seagate thought long and hard and created the GoFlex system, a drive with removable transport hardware that can turn a standard SATA drive into a USB 2.0/3.0 drive, a Firewire storage device, or even a powered eSATA device. When… Read More

Not much to talk about here. Iomega just launched eGo drives in four colors with up to 500GB capacity. The 500GB model is $135 while the 250GB is $85. They run on USB power and include back-up and virus protection software right on the disk. They should be available right about nowish or early June. Read More

A man becomes preeminent, he’s expected to have enthusiasms. Enthusiasms, enthusiasms… What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? The Fujitsu 400GB HandyDrive 5.
This small drive quite portable and amazingly light. It is the first drive I’d consider traveling with simply because it comes in a solid, no-frills case and is powered over USB. Read More

Fujitsu just announced a 500GB, 5400RPM SATA drive for portable applications with full disk encryption, a boon to the paranoid.
The drive supports 256-bit AES. No pricing but expect it in heavy duty laptops soon. Read More

A few years ago, a 512MB memory card was a huge deal. MP3 players used to have 128MB internal storage and the iPod was a monster at 40GB. Now time-travel into the future where the FreeAgent Go 500GB drive first half a terabyte of storage into a package a little bigger than an iPhone.
This slim drive has one port – a mini-USB port that connects either to a Y-USB cable – one… Read More

Welcome to the era of no moving parts. Micron is preparing 256GB solid state drives for use in laptops and mini PCs and expect to have working models available in the next year. No pricing, but the drives use 2.5 watts when active and require limited cooling, ensuring your mini notebook won’t fry your lap.
SSD manufacturers have been on a learning curve, Klein said. “One of the… Read More

Solid state drive capacity and availability continues to grow with the announcement of Mtron’s 128GB 1.8-inch SSD.
It’ll have maximum read/write speeds of 120MBps and 100MBps, respectively, and will be targeted at UMPC devices.
It’s got a PATA interface, so it can replace most existing notebook hard drives pretty easily. And with the 6X speed bump and half the power… Read More

Corsair, memory extraordinaire, has made me very happy. Their newest USB flash drives are available in sizes up to 32GB, and with the ruggedized, water-resistant Survivor series, you’ve got yourself a little data safe that is shock resistant, holds an entire bootable OS, and can be taken in the shower. They’ll run you about $250, though.
Warning: these devices are NOT lava-proof. Read More

The BWU-200S is a 4x BD-R/16xDVD+/-R burner for the average Joe. At about $600 it essentially democratizes the BD burning process to an impressive degree, enabling us all to create our own “backup disk” of media, movies, and amateur goat porn without having trek down to Ye Olde Blu-Ray Disk Burning Shoppe.
The disks can hold up to 50GB of data or 230 minutes of 1080i vide. It… Read More

Geeks like to eat sweets. Don’t believe me? Go find a geek, you’ll find junk food. But homemade cake is better than store bought cake. And homemade cake from your favorite computer is the best of all.
Most Peecee desktops have at least one 5 1/4-inch drive slot that sits idle. Fill it up with this EZ-Bake Oven and you can make little tarts while you frag jerks.
It’s… Read More